back that was seamed and scarred with "the marks of the Lord Jesus." Of the hundreds of Christians who were taken inside the legation grounds in Peking, not one proved false to their benefactors. "In the midday heat, in the drenching night rains, under storms of shot and shell, they fought, filled sand-bags, built barricades, dug trenches, sang hymns and offered prayers to the God whom the foreigner had taught them to love." Even the children were faithful. During the scream of deadly bullets, and the roar of burning buildings, the voices of the Junior Christian Endeavour Society were heard singing :

"There'll be no dark valley when Jesus comes."

Such instances could be multiplied almost indefinitely from the experiences of Chinese Christians during the Boxer uprising. Indeed the fortitude of the persecuted Christians was so remarkable that in many cases the Boxers cut out the hearts of their victims to find the secret of such sublime faith, declaring: "They have eaten the foreigner's medicine." In those humble Chinese the world has again seen a vital faith, again seen that the age of heroism has not passed, again seen that men and women are willing to die for Christ. Multitudes withstood a persecution as frightful as that of the early disciples in the gardens and arenas of Nero. If they were hypocrites why did they not recant? As Dr. Maltbie Babcock truly said :— "One-tenth of the hypocrisy with which they were charged would have saved them from martyrdom." But thousands of them died rather than abjure their faith, and thousands more "had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated; wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth.”

Col. Charles Denby, late United States Minister to China,

declared :-"Not two per cent. of the Chinese Christians proved recreant to their faith and many meet death as martyrs.

1

Let

us not call them 'Rice Christians' any more. Their conduct at the British Legation and the Peitang is deserving of all praise." Beyond question, the Chinese Christians as a body stood the test of fire and blood quite as well as an equal number of American Christians would have stood it.

One of the most trying experiences of the missionaries has been the dealing with those who did recant. Some of the cases were pitiful. Poor, ignorant men, confessed their sin with streaming eyes, saying that they did not mean to deny their Lord, but that they could not see their wives outraged and their babies' heads crushed against stone walls. Others admitted that, though they stood firm while one hundred blows were rained upon their bare backs, yet after that they became confused and were only dimly conscious of what they said to escape further agony than flesh and blood could endure. Still others made a distinction, unfamiliar to us, but quite in harmony with Oriental hereditary notions, between the convictions of the heart and the profession of the lips, so that they externally and temporarily bowed their heads to the storm without feeling that they were thereby renouncing their faith. One of the best Chinese ministers in Shantung, after 200 lashes, which pounded his back into a pulp, feebly muttered an affirmative to the question: "Will you leave the devils' church?" But he explained afterwards that while he promised to leave "the devils' church," he did not promise to leave Christ's Church. The deception was not as apparent to him as it is to us whose moral perceptions have been sharpened by centuries of Christian nurture which have been denied to the Chinese.

When the proclamation ordering the extermination of all foreigners and Christians was posted on the walls of Chingchou-fu, a friendly official hinted that if the Chinese pastors Letter, April 28, 1902.

would sign a document to the effect that they would "no longer practice the foreign religion," he would accept it as sufficient on behalf of all their flocks, and not enforce the order. Warrants for the arrest of every Christian had already been written. Scoundrels were hurrying in from distant villages to join in the riot of plunder and lust. Two women had already been killed. What were the pastors to do? There was no missionary to guide them, for long before the consuls had ordered all foreigners out of the interior. The agonized pastors determined to sacrifice themselves for their innocent people, to go through the form of giving up the "foreign" religion. That word "foreign" must be emphasized to understand their temptation, for the Chinese Christians do not feel that Christianity is foreign, but that it is theirs as well as ours. Moreover, the pastors were made to understand that it was simply a legal fiction, not affecting the religion of their hearts, but only a temporary expedient that the friendly magistrate might have a pretext for giving his protection to the Christians. They were not asked to engage in any idolatrous rite or to make any public apostasy, but simply to sign a statement "no longer to practice the foreign religion." "So far from recanting," it was urged upon them, "you are preventing recanting."

Their decision may be best given in the words of Pastor Wu Chien Cheng: "When I thought of these people," he said, his emotion being so great that the tears were running down his face, "in most cases with children and aged parents dependent upon them, and thought of all that was involved for them if I refused to sign the paper-well, I couldn't help it. I decided to take on myself the shame and the sin."

As the Rev. J. P. Bruce, of the English Baptist Mission, who told me of this incident, truly says: "Who could listen to such a narrative-so sad and painful and yet not without much that was noble-without sympathy and tears?" In this spirit of tenderness, so marked in the Lord's dealings with

sinful Peter, the missionaries dealt with the recanting Christians. With the impostors, indeed, they had less mercy. The Rev. R. M. Mateer secured the arrest of two scapegraces who, under pretense of being Christians, had blackmailed innocent villagers. Very plainly, too, did the missionaries deal with Christians, who, like some people in the United States after a fire, placed an extravagant valuation upon what they had lost. But these were exceptional cases.

On the whole, Christians in Europe and America may well have stronger sympathy and respect for their fellow-Christians in China who have suffered so much for conscience' sake. Purified and chastened by the fearful holocaust through which they have passed, they are stronger spiritually than ever before. Like the apostles after Pentecost, they are giving "with great power their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus." "The Chinese Church is not yet strong enough to stand entirely alone, but it is far stronger and more self-conscious of the eternal indwelling Spirit than ever before. It has learned the power of God to keep the soul in times of deadly peril, and to enable the weakest to give the strongest testimony. It has learned by humiliation and confession to put away its sins, and to gird itself for new conflicts and new victories. Its ablest leaders are more trustworthy men than before their trials, and the body of believers has a unity and a cohesiveness which will certainly bear fruit in the not distant future."1

1 Smith, "Rex Christus," p. 212.

XXIII

THE STRAIN OF READJUSTMENT TO CHANGED

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

HE economic revolution in Asia, discussed in a preceding chapter,' bears heavily on the Chinese Christians. So far as the pressure affects the rank and file of the membership, the mission boards cannot give adequate relief. Abroad as well as at home, it must remain the inexorable rule that a Christian must live within his income and buy new things only as he can pay for them. Any other policy would mean utter ruin. Here also, men must "work out their own salvation"; and the missionary, while trying to lift men out of barbarous social conditions on the one hand, should on the other resolutely oppose the improvident eagerness which leads a blanketed Sioux Indian to buy on credit a rubber-tired surrey.

But what about the native ministers and teachers, who find it impossible to live on the salaries of a decade ago? The problem of the ordinary helper is not so difficult. Springing from the common people, accustomed from childhood to a meagre scale of living, the small salaries which the people can pay either in full or in large part are usually equal to the income which they would have had if they had not become Christians. But some native ministers come from a higher social grade. They are men of education and refinement. They cannot live in a mud hut, go barefooted, wear a loin cloth and subsist on a few cents' worth of rice a day. They must not only have better houses and food and clothing, but they must have books and periodicals and the other apparatus of educated